


the only thing that's worse than one is none

by revanchxst (BadWolfGirl01)



Series: we live or die to take the throne [9]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Manipulation, Thexan is a Good Brother, Valkorion is the Actual Worst, Valkorion raises the Jedi Knight, does this count as, he shoots her with lightning yall, i am once again asking to murder Valkorion with a rusty spoon, if it's forced, partner on partner violence, this is not a nice fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29553906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolfGirl01/pseuds/revanchxst
Summary: Ryn is standing in the back of the room, in her armor but with her helmet discarded, paler than Lia’s ever seen her, and she shouldn’t, he’ll punish her later for this but Lia jerks her gaze to meet Valkorion’s and the look in his eyes-He knows. He knows.“Father,” she starts, voice shaking, and his eyes are boring into her own and the smothering, suffocating weight of his presence in the Force bears down on her, makes her feel small in a way she hasn’t since she was eleven. “Knight Edair hasn’t done anything deserving of trial by combat.”[or: a punishment.]
Relationships: Female Jedi Knight | Hero of Tython & Thexan, Female Jedi Knight | Hero of Tython & Valkorion, Female Jedi Knight | Hero of Tython/Original Female Character
Series: we live or die to take the throne [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153424
Kudos: 3





	the only thing that's worse than one is none

**Author's Note:**

> this is,,,, not a nice fic. fuck Valkorion. anyway, if you were wondering why Lia is so determined that her relationship with Vaylin is just an alliance, or if you were wondering about the brief mentions of Ryn, here you go! have a fun time. ha. ha. ha
> 
> (i hate everything about this fic but i'm tired of staring at it so here)
> 
> title is from "in between" by linkin park

Lia doesn’t think she’s ever seen anyone as beautiful as Ryn Edair. The young Knight is two years older than Lia, dark skin and hazel eyes and hair dyed blonde, has been one of her regular sparring partners for a little under a year. She’s not exactly sure when things between them changed the way they did; maybe it was the post-spar conversations around the water dispenser that turned into hours and the both of them running late for their next meeting, or maybe it was the way Ryn’s eyes flicker green in the right light, or maybe it was the shy smiles and spars abandoned for sitting and laughing on a balcony overlooking the rest of the Spire. She figures it  _ probably _ changed before the first late-night meeting in a shadowy corner of the training center while Thexan covered her absence, but, well, that could’ve been it too.

Is this what it’s like to date someone? Lia’s not exactly sure it is; they don’t ever go anywhere outside the complexes, because of the risk of being caught, and they haven’t given each other any gifts. It’s not a  _ relationship, _ exactly, but it’s the closest she’s ever going to be able to get, more than likely. Father doesn’t like any of them having peers outside the family, much less relationships - their focus is to be on their training and on surpassing each other. For Lia, that means Arcann, her rival for the position as Valkorion’s apprentice, who has always been bitter that their father praised her for her defeat of him.

(Lia doesn’t  _ dislike _ Arcann, how could she? He’s her brother, and she loves him, even if things have been tense lately. But she’s  _ frustrated _ by his bitterness, by how he blames her for Valkorion’s inattention, when if they were just  _ better _ their father would smile at them again. It isn’t her fault father was pleased with her for beating Arcann in a spar.)

Either way, spending time with Ryn is always the best part of her days, and Lia picks up the pace as she winds through the halls of the Knights’ training complex. They’re supposed to spar today, and then they were talking about maybe sneaking out of the Spire to spend a night in the Endless Swamp, which Lia hasn’t done since she was fourteen and she, Arcann, Thexan, and Vaylin (eleven at the time, less than a year before father took her to Nathema) slipped out and spent a week living in abandoned homes built by exiles. The swamp is damp and bug-infested and filled with iknayids, but it’s purely nature and wilderness, which there’s hardly any of in the Spire, and it’s  _ free, _ without Valkorion’s constant oversight. Out in the swamps, with just Ryn for company, Lia can be  _ herself, _ instead of her father’s future apprentice, instead of Arcann’s rival, instead of everything Valkorion has trained her to be, like she hasn’t been since she was eleven years old swimming through a river on Tython.

(Tython is barely more than a hazy memory in the back of her mind, after six years and so much training she’d had to forget the Jedi to learn, but she remembers the river, and she remembers the warm presence always at her side, everything else about J’lima a blur lost to time. The first eleven years of her life are not a time she lets herself remember, not often - if she thinks about everything she was taught as a child, everything she lost when father found her, she can’t reconcile herself with her duty, her purpose, her  _ potential. _

And she’s sacrificed too much to give up her chance to be Valkorion’s apprentice now.)

When Lia steps into the training room she and Ryn always use, though, Ryn isn’t the only one there. And  _ Ixaz take it, _ this is why she needs to pay more attention to the Force, instead of letting herself get distracted, because-

How could she have missed the endless, consuming  _ galaxy _ that is Valkorion’s Force-signature?

Her father is in the center of the training room, hands behind his back as they always are, looking at the door, and Lia drops to a knee immediately, lowering her eyes to Valkorion’s boots. “Father,” she says, and she barely dares to breathe under the full weight of his attention, his  _ gaze, _ leveled straight and solely at her for the first time in years.

Valkorion hasn’t taken an interest in her combat training for years, not particularly. He watches her and Arcann fight, and sometimes he’ll arrange to have them duel a Horizon guard, but since the moment he handed Lia’s training over to Senya he’s never concerned himself with Lia’s lightsaber skills. She’s  _ good, _ she’s beaten Arcann in front of him, and that’s all that matters to him - he teaches her the Force, and war, and politics. Why is he here, now, the  _ Immortal Emperor _ in a room meant for Knights?

“Lia,” her father says, and the  _ weight _ he gives to her name - there’s a tenor of  _ anger _ shivering through the air on the pair of syllables, and it’s all she can do not to flinch. “There’s been a change of plans; your training today will be a duel to the death. I wish to see how well you follow orders.” 

He’s done this before, once or twice, when he needed someone dead and wanted to see his children fight for their survival, but those had always been televised events, spectacles,  _ look at this criminal, look at the heirs to the Eternal Empire, see how your empire has a secure future. _ This is an out of the way training room in the Knights’ complex where people rarely come, that’s why she and Ryn train here.

“Who-” Lia starts, and Valkorion steps out of the way, and she lifts her eyes to see- to see-

_ Ryn _ is standing in the back of the room, in her armor but with her helmet discarded, paler than Lia’s ever seen her, and she shouldn’t, he’ll punish her later for this but Lia jerks her gaze to meet Valkorion’s and the look in his eyes-

He knows.  _ He knows. _

“Father,” she starts, voice shaking, and his eyes are boring into her own and the smothering, suffocating weight of his presence in the Force bears down on her, makes her feel  _ small _ in a way she hasn’t since she was eleven. “Knight Edair hasn’t done anything deserving of trial by combat.”

Father doesn’t  _ move, _ not really, but the Force rises around him and she can’t quite contain the flinch. But- Ryn hasn’t  _ done anything, _ and it’s not like there’s anything illegal about being in a relationship with one of the heirs of Zakuul. She doesn’t deserve to  _ die, _ she hasn’t done anything, and the people father always had Lia kill before were criminals.

She can’t do this.

“Are you questioning your Emperor’s orders?” Valkorion asks, voice dangerously soft, and this is bad, this is  _ so _ bad, she shouldn’t challenge him when he’s like this, but- She can’t do this. She  _ won’t _ do this. She wants to be her father’s apprentice, she  _ does, _ enough to do nearly anything for him, but this is- how can he ask her to do this?

Lia meets and holds his gaze, refuses to flinch back from the ice-cold  _ anger _ in it. “Yes,” she says, firmly, as loudly as she dares. “I won’t do this, father.”

The Force  _ howls _ and Valkorion pulls one hand from behind his back, and Lia barely even has time to react before a bolt of blue-white lightning explodes from his fingers. It crashes into her and she gasps out a pained noise as the current  _ burns _ across her skin, sends tremors through her muscles, and she’s falling forward onto her hands and choking for breath, coughing on an inhale as her body shakes and twitches with the aftereffects.

“You seem to have forgotten your respect,” her father says coldly. The first time he’s shown her emotion in months and it’s anger and ice and pain. “A pity that your brother, with all his lack of control, understands the deference due an Emperor better than you.”

Lia is better than Arcann. She  _ knows _ that, and he knows it too, it’s why he’s so angry at her these days, and she’d thought father had known that too - how can he say she doesn’t  _ understand _ just because she doesn’t want to kill her- to kill Ryn? And here he is, forcing her onto her knees, forcing her to  _ bow, _ nearly, punishing her with  _ pain _ like she’s a Knight and not his daughter, not his acolyte.

“That’s not  _ fair,” _ bursts out of her before she can stop it. And she should know better, she  _ does, _ but she is seventeen and she’s sacrificed  _ so much _ for a chance at apprenticeship and this anger, this  _ disapproval _ tastes bitter and dark on her tongue and she  _ doesn’t want to kill Ryn. _

And Valkorion-

Valkorion  _ laughs, _ and it’s the sound of the wind rattling through a void. “Nothing about your life has been or ever will be  _ fair,” _ her father says. “You deserve only what you can take, and you will have only what you are willing to sacrifice for. Now, you will kill this Knight yourself, or I will kill her for you and there will be consequences for your weakness.”

She can’t. She  _ can’t. _

“Lia,” Ryn says, softly, from the back of the room, and Lia tears her eyes away from Valkorion’s boots to look at her. “You need to do this.”

And  _ I wish to see how well you follow orders; _ if she disobeys, she doesn’t want to know what the consequences will be. She doesn’t want to know what her father will do to her when she’s earned his attention by weakness, not strength.

So Lia swallows and pushes herself to her feet, and Valkorion steps aside and crosses the room to stand by the wall, arms behind his back once again. “A wise choice,” he says, as she pulls the black and gold lightsaber from her belt and settles herself across from Ryn. Something is trying to claw its way up her throat and spill onto her face, something burning and choking, and she almost thinks this is what  _ hatred _ feels like.

She can’t do this. But what choice does she have?

Ryn ignites a blue lightsaber, and for a moment Lia can almost forget her father standing at the edge of the room, can almost forget this isn’t just a normal spar, can almost forget that she’s supposed to drive her blade into her- her girlfriend’s chest and walk away like it means nothing at all, like  _ they _ mean nothing at all. Like Valkorion isn’t doing this just because he hates them having any connections outside the family.

_ (I guess you’re my sparring partner today, _ Lia says, walking into the training room she favors and looking over the Knight waiting for her. Not one she’s familiar with, by the Force-signature; her training partners tend to rotate out from time to time, to give her a variety of styles to test herself against, and because most Knights get tired of losing to a sixteen year old, whether she’s the Emperor’s daughter or not. Besides, if they spent too much time around her, they might get  _ friendly, _ and no one wants that. This one, though, she’s younger than Lia’s usual partners, and there’s not the same  _ awe _ in her Force-signature that so many of them have, as they’re all so desperate to reassure her how much an honor it is to fight her.

Honestly. It’s exhausting. She  _ knows _ it’s an honor for a Knight to spar against one of the heirs to the Eternal Throne, she doesn’t need to hear it from them every day.

_ For the foreseeable future, I think, _ the woman says with an easy smile.  _ My name is Ryn, I’ve just graduated from training. _

_ And they put you with me? _ Lia asks, surprised - though it’d explain why she’s so young. Usually, though, it’s only the older Knights who’re willing to fight the most powerful Force-users in the Eternal Empire.

Ryn shrugs one shoulder.  _ I asked for this, _ she says.  _ What better way to improve than to fight the best lightsaber duelist in our Empire? _ And she gives Lia a smile, with just enough of a sharp edge to draw her in. Ambition, the desire to better herself - that, Lia can understand.

And so she smiles back.  _ It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ryn.) _

Ryn attacks first. That’s not how this usually goes - Lia never sits back on the defensive, never lets her opponent set the tone of the fight, because offense, attack, is her specialty, is where she’s strongest. But she can’t bring herself to make the first move, it’s easiest to just- let her body fall back on instinct, blocking and countering, staying on the defensive as Ryn hammers at her with strong, precise strikes like this is any other duel. Her face is set and focused and how can she do this? How can she just- accept it?

Lia certainly can’t.

Ryn’s saber flashes down towards her face and Lia blocks and steps aside, and she could strike back but she doesn’t, just defends, dodges, and this is wearing on her but as she ducks out of the way of another flurry of blows she can’t,  _ can’t _ force herself to respond. She’s  _ in love _ with Ryn, she thinks, how can she just- fight her?

There’s an opening. Lia can’t quite make herself take it quickly enough, and then Ryn’s guard is back up, and there’s a hum from the edge of the room.

“Disappointing,” her father says, and when she glances over at him he’s shaking his head, and it sends a surge of  _ anger _ through her. How dare he judge her for her-  _ performance _ when this is a fight she never wanted to have? “If you cannot do better than this, I’ll be forced to intervene.”

And this is her punishment, if Valkorion has to step in it will be  _ brutal _ and in the end- In the end, Lia is more afraid of him than she is in love with Ryn.

(The setting sun filters in through the Spire’s outer walls, casting everything in crimson and gold and dusky violet, the colors playing over Ryn’s face and hair as she leans on the edge of the balcony. They were supposed to be training today, but Lia’s already  _ good, _ she doesn’t need the extra practice, and Ryn has improved vastly since they started sparring - they can afford a day off. It’s not like there’s anyone to notice anyway, father hasn’t looked at Lia in months and she’s not sure what to do to get his approval back.

She’ll think of something later. But for now- for now she can watch the sun set over the swamp and smile at the look on Ryn’s face and forget about the way Arcann looked at her with so much  _ hatred _ earlier.

_ You’re staring, _ Ryn says, turning to smile, and Lia rolls her eyes fondly.  _ Do I have something on my face? _

_ Just the sun, _ Lia says.  _ You’re beautiful, you know. _

_ I’m sure you say that to all the girls, _ Ryn teases, and she can’t contain a grin.  _ Do you kick all their asses in the sparring rings, too? _

_ Only the ones I like.) _

“I’m sorry,” Lia says, and her voice is shaking, and then she gathers the Force around her and lunges forward onto the attack.

And Ryn fights gamely, brings her saber up to meet Lia’s gold one, twists and counters and meets the Force with her own strength, but Lia is one of the most powerful Force-users on Zakuul and she is  _ good _ and Ryn may have been training with her for nearly a year but what is that against a lifetime? Lia sinks deep into combat stillness, into the Force’s fire and strength around her, and she forces away the pain, the anger, the sorrow, and she lets the familiarity of saber combat, of what she’s best at, carry her through motions she’s driven into her muscles since she was old enough to hold a training blade.

It only takes a few minutes to knock Ryn’s saber from her hand, and then-

She stops. Ryn is defenseless in front of her and all Lia can think of is late hours in the night in out of the way corners, is sunset over the swamp, is Ryn landing on her back and laughing as Lia offers her a hand up, again and again, and it feels like all the words they said, all the laughter, all of it is rising up in her throat to choke her, to hold her muscles frozen in place, and she  _ can’t do this, _ but father is watching and he hasn’t looked at her in months and this was a direct order.

“Just do it, Lia,” Ryn says, not sharp but pointed, firm, and she holds Lia’s eyes, makes no move to reach for her saber again. “We both know how this ends, you aren’t doing either of us any favors by hesitating.”

And Lia looks over at her father, at his emotionless face and hard eyes, and she summons every scrap of  _ anger _ for him she can find, at the way he discards her, refuses to give her even a crumb of approval, makes her fight with Arcann and with Thexan for a position he promised her when she was eleven years old, and she has sacrificed far too much to give up now but by the five gods she does not have to  _ enjoy this. _

For a moment, her saber wavers in her hands, and then she pulls all that anger, that rage, that  _ hatred _ into her hands and she brings her saber crashing down through Ryn’s armor. And that Force-signature, brilliant and warm and beautiful like the sun, flickers out.

Lia doesn’t look at the body for fear of the nausea rising in her throat. She just turns off her saber, hooks it on her belt, bows to her father - who gives her a single nod in response - and then she strides from the room like she’s not shaking.

She’s not sure, after, how she makes it back to the palace without shattering. There are tears in her eyes and she can’t stop hearing the sound of Ryn’s body hitting the floor and the  _ look on her face- _ And she’s choking on her breaths, on the tears she can’t let fall, and it’s all she can do to pray to Scyva that Thexan is in his room. Thexan, the kind one, the soft one, the one father overlooks, the one who’s spent months covering for her so she could see Ryn, the only one who’s shown her anything like  _ kindness _ since Senya left.

Valkorion would call this a weakness. But she needs this moment if she’s ever going to survive.

Thexan is in his rooms, thankfully, hunched over his lightsaber at his workbench, and he straightens and turns when she pushes her way in, concern crossing his face and filling the Force. “Lia?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”

And she can’t hold back the tears any longer.

Thexan moves to her side immediately, pulls her into a hug, and she buries her face in his shoulder and clings, like she hasn’t since she was a  _ child, _ because Valkorion trained this out of her early and after Senya left there was no one to go to anyway. “Ryn,” she gasps into his black tunic, and it burns, and  _ gods, _ how could she have done that? How could she have  _ killed her? _ “He- he found out.”

“Where is Ryn now?” he asks, something like urgency in his voice. “Lia. Where is she?”

“Dead,” she whispers, and a shudder runs through her whole body at the word. “Father ordered me to-”

She can’t say the words. But she doesn’t need to; Thexan stiffens and then wraps his arms more tightly around her. “I’m sorry,” and his voice is quiet. “It wasn’t your fault,” but how can that be true? If she hadn’t had a  _ relationship _ with Ryn in the first place, she never would’ve died, Valkorion never would’ve noticed her, never would’ve cared. And  _ oh, _ but she understands the lesson all-too-well: she is not allowed anything good, none of them are.

_ You deserve only what you can take, and you will have only what you are willing to sacrifice for.  _

So she can choose. She can choose warmth, she can choose a smile and a sunset and arms tight around her, she can choose the same unfulfilling life as the rest of the galaxy, the rest of Zakuul. Or, or, she can sacrifice that happiness for  _ power, _ power like her father has, the kind of power that will let her force  _ others _ to bow to her, that will let her sit on her father’s Throne some day.

And when  _ she _ gives the orders, she’ll never have to kill anyone she doesn’t want to, she’ll never have to do  _ anything _ she doesn’t want to. She will be free. And Valkorion is right - she will only be worthy of that freedom if she reaches out and takes it, if she fights for it, and so what if she- if she has to sacrifice for it? She will never make this mistake again, the mistake of  _ caring, _ of getting close to anyone, not like this.

_ May Scyva bless your soul, Ryn, and Izax carry you home, _ she thinks, and then she sucks in a shaky breath and swallows down the tears, straightens, Thexan immediately letting go.

She will find a way to take her freedom.

And she will do it alone.


End file.
